Author: Brian J. Noggle

Book Report: In the Valley of Yesterday by Jeane K. Harvey (2020)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverWhen blog and Internet friend Blogodidact mentioned his mother wrote a book, of course I rushed right in and ordered it. Thankfully, his mother was not in a touring production of a Broadway musical or local revival. As I have mentioned, I buy my friends’ (and, apparently, their parents’) books and music, which is about ten bucks a pop. I once supported someone I knew in musical theatre, and tickets for the four of us were $120 or so. So thank goodness for the greater ambition of original works. Of course, I would not say this in real life to the fellow who starred in Jesus Christ Superstar, as his “a pop” has been known to sideline me from martial arts classes for months. But, where was I?

Oh, yes: This book falls right into my wheelhouse of small-town personal and historical memoirs, except that instead of some unknown person writing about growing up in Missouri or the Ozarks, we get stories of growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1930s and 1940s (and beyond a bit). The author’s father is a studio art director, but when Great Depression I hits (I’m numbering them, as I expect Great Depression II: Candlelight Bugaloo to come any day now), he buys some property in the valley, and the family sets up a ranch with small animals to tide them over. So you’ve got stories about managing animals and construction interspersed with celebrities popping in (Alberto Vargas pops over for an artist group paint session, for example). Eventually, the father gets another job with the studios and works on a number of known films with Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, and others. In most of those anecdotes, the celebrities don’t drop by, but we get the stories related from the father’s perspective, sort of.

So I really liked the book because, as I mentioned, it has the flavor of a rural memoir with the injection of the old-time movie business. Which is not to say that I did not tag a couple quibbles, which I did, but I will tuck them under the fold so that only Van and his family have to see them.
Continue reading “Book Report: In the Valley of Yesterday by Jeane K. Harvey (2020)” →

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On Old Email Addresses

Brian J. Noggle

On LinkedIn, I posted:

So what’s the oldest email you can open up right now?

Something not necessarily in your inbox, but rather in a folder somewhere in your email clients but not in an archive or backup somewhere?

My oldest is apparently December 16, 2002, a response to a query pitching a play to a theatre company in St. Louis.

Which is weird, because I am pretty sure I had the email account before the turn of the century; although an Older label appears, I can’t click it to see emails from before then.

Related: When did you send your first email on the Internet?

It was probably a query for The Courtship of Barbara Holt, and the theatre (in Florissant, not St. Louis proper) was ultimately rejected, of course.

But it got me to thinking of the email addresses I’ve had over the years.

My first “Internet” email address would have been an AOL account. I just tried to log into it, and it fails with an error on AOL’s part, so no digging up emails from the early 1990s. Although I guess I had a Prodigy account in 1990, so perhaps that would count. But I don’t remember sending a lot of emails to that account. And when I was a kid with a modem, the Color Graphics 64 Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) offered messages between users of the board, but not really the Internet–although I think a plug-in came along later that helped with that. Boards hosted on IBM compatible computers, such as WWIV (World War IV), had the ability to read newsgroups and send email over the Internet, but I don’t know if I ever did. So my first email on the Internet could have come as early as the 1980s, but I can really only pinpoint sending emails in the mid-to-late 1990s, including the ones starting in 1997 I sent to the woman whom I would marry. Via the aforementioned AOL account.

Somewhere around 1998 or 1999, I got a Hotmail account, and it’s in that account that one finds the 2002 email. I am pretty sure I got a Hotmail account because it was more sophisticated than an AOL account at the time. But it has been useful over the decades as an email address to use when ordering things and whatnot where marketing emails are going to come.

When I moved into my first apartment, I switched to a real Internet Service Provider, in this case the one run by the local newspaper, and I had that email address for a couple of years, including the first years in the house at Casinoport. But when I formed my consulting company in 2004, I bought the domain name, set up a Web site, and set up email for the company, and it has been my primary email address since. The archives only go back to summer of 2007, though, as a Thunderbird update or computer change cut off the emails from before.

I dunno what got me to thinking about this last night. But it’s kind of funny. Emails have been a fixture for most of my adult life, and if you count the BBS messages, it goes back to most of my life indeed. And judging from comments on the LinkedIn, some other adults have emails going back decades. Our kids will likely not have that continuity; they have email addresses for school, but their peer communication goes through Discord, WhatsApp, and other ephemeral conduits.

So much informal, and formal, communication is getting lost. One wonders if this will be referred to as a Dark Ages sometime in the future.

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Springfield Three in The Sun

Brian J. Noggle

Today, The Sun has a story about the women who disappeared in Springfield thirty years ago: NEVER FOUND Creepy mystery of how two pals & mum vanished without a trace – with only cue being disturbing answer phone message.

As I mentioned in the book review for the recent novel Gone in the Night, this case continues to resonate vividly in Springfield.

Probably because it’s a smaller city, with less crime than other places, because it’s unresolved, and because it’s in living memory.

I mean, I cannot think of a comparable case in either St. Louis or Milwaukee, but I have been out of their stadtgeists for a while now.

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Good Book Hunting, Saturday, April 30, 2022: The Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library Book Sale and ABC Books

Brian J. Noggle

As I mentioned Friday, I stopped at the Friends of the Springfield Greene-County Library book sale to pick through records and dollar poetry books and at ABC Books for gift cards for teachers. I held you in suspense as to whether I would return on Saturday to go through the Better Books section when the Better Books and whatnot would be half price and ABC Books would hold a book signing.

To be honest, I stopped at ABC Books on Friday because I was unsure whether I would return to the north side of Springfield on Saturday, as many things could preclude my return trip. But after a rare appearance on a Saturday morning at the dojo, I went home, cleaned myself up, and pointed my little truck northward. I actually took the highway route all the way around Springfield; I think it saved a couple of minutes, but the view was less interesting.

So, yes, I did get some books.

I got a single record from the Better Books section which was down to two partially full crates: Lady Godiva by Peter and Gordon because PWOC (Pretty Woman on Cover). First, I thought it might be some musical sound recording. Then, I thought it was that one song you hear on the radio. Oh, but no, that’s “Lady Madonna” by the Beatles:

Apparently Peter and Gordon’s song has a sixties folk flavor:

You know, the genre I don’t actually like. Ah, well, it was a dollar.

I got some audio books/audio courses just in time for a long drive to Wisconsin this summer:

  • Mathematical Decision Making
  • Critical Business Skills for Success
  • Behavioral Economics
  • A History of European Art
  • Reagan: The Life by H.W. Brands

I shall probably pack Reagan, Critical Business Skills for Success, and A History of European Art for the ride as the look as though they’ll be the least likely to put me to sleep. And I’m glad that I got to reload the audio content a bit since the John Dewey entry in the Giants of Philosophy series has been riding unheeded in the truck for a while, replaced in the cassette player by a warped Iron Maiden cassette from the 1980s. Property of my beautiful wife, but by the laws of the state of Missouri, it’s half mine now.

And the books include:

  • Childe Harold’s Pilgramage by Lord Byron, an 1847 edition, for $2.50. The spine is a bit banged up, but I’ve got it wrapped in mylar to protect it. Clearly not a reading copy.
  • The Pillars of Society, a play in four acts, in an 1890 paper cover edition. Not too bad of shape considering it’s a paperback. For $2.50.
  • Mine The Harvest by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a stated first edition from 1954, a posthumous collection. With a dust jacket. For $1. As you know, gentle reader, Millay is my favorite poet, and this is a steal.
  • Blood Relatives by Ed McBain. Apparently, I already own this book–I wrote a book report on it in 2006, so I will have to see if this is a better copy. It’s so rare to find mid-career McBain in the wild, even in used bookstores, these days so I snapped it up for $1.
  • Three books from Lloyd C. Douglas, Doctor Hudson’s Secret Journal, White Banners, and Disputed Passage. They’re matching Colliers editions, and I paid $1.50 each for them. I liked his Home for Christmas when I read it as my Christmas novel in 2011. The fact that he had a set of matched Colliers books meant that he was quite something in the 1930s–I mean, I have some Steinbeck in similar editions. But Douglas would seem to be mostly forgotten now. Maybe not by people who read Karen Kingsbury novels, though.
  • Options by O. Henry, a 1909 edition of short stories. For $1, for crying out loud.
  • The Saint Meets His Match by Leslie Charteris. I recognized the logo on the front of the book, the mark of the Saint. I have only read a couple in the series. Fun fact: The Saint has been portrayed in visual media by Roger Moore and by Van Kilmer. Also $1.
  • The Sky Is The Limit, the autobiography of Ralph K. Manley as told to and written by Susie Knust. The story of a paratrooper in World War II. Signed by Manley. $1.50!
  • Fish Tales and Scales by Jean Elizabeth Ford. A signed copy of small reminiscences and tales from the 1940s–probably as told by relatives to the author. Local interest, and $1.
  • Girlfriends and Wives, a collection of poetry by Robert Wallace. $1. Signed by the author.
  • Two books by local author Todd Parnell, The Buffalo, Ben, and Me and Privilege and Privation. Apparently, I bought a copy of Privilege and Privation at the May 2021 Friends of the Library Book Sale. Man, I really should get all of my books into a database, not just the books I have read. But my current database is wheezing under its load already–it’s got an Access DB back-end, so it’s not designed for big data sets. Also, it is 22 years old. But modern, Web-based databases have subscription pricing, and I’m kind of cheap and would prefer to have my own data in my own hands. So perhaps I will have to write something of my own. And I’ll have to find which copy of Privilege and Privation to keep. This one is signed, but the other is also probably signed. These were $1.50 each.
  • The Lego Power Functions Idea Book: Machines and Mechanisms by Yoshihito Isogawa. I bought this for my youngest son, but who knows what he will do with it. He has a phone now.
  • Fine Books: Pleasures and Treasures by Alan G. Thomas. Kind of a history and picture book of, well, books. $1.50.
  • Electricity for All: The Story of Ozark Electric Cooperative, 1937-2012 by Jim McCarty. Ozark is my electric coop, and this will be a fascinating look at electricity getting rolled out to this area in living memory.
  • Fantin-Latour by Michelle Verrier, a monograph of an artist who looks like he focused a lot on still lifes with flowers. It looks to be mostly images after a little introduction, perfect for browsing during football games, although I am not sure we will watch much football in the autumn.
    $1.00.
  • Style in MotionL Munkacsi Photographs of the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s by Nancy White and Jogn Esten. C’mon, man, it’s got Fred Astaire on the cover. Everything else is gravy. It looks to be mostly actual photographs of the era and little text. Good for browsing during a football game, but, well. I paid a whopping $2.50 for it.

So, all told, I spent less than fifty dollars at the book sale, and the biggest bunch of that was on the audio courses.

Then, I stopped by ABC Books for the book signing. When I approached the table, S.V. Farnsworth asked if I’d come to see her, and I said I had, and that I’d missed her last time. “Oh, you’re that guy,” she said. Apparently, she’s got an alert set up that notifies her of mentions of her name on the Internet, and she was alerted with the post from last November when I said I’d missed her book signing or my post on Friday talking about maybe going to see her today. So when I said I’d take one of each, she pointed out that I already own Hard Start: Mars Intrigue. Ah, but not a signed copy, I responded.

So I got her six available books:

  • Hard Start: Mars Intrigue. Now that I have two copies, I will be twice as likely to read it soon.
  • Woman of the Stone, first book in the Modutan Empire series. Fantasy, it would seem.
  • Monarch in the Flames, the second book of the series. One presumes at least four books if the elements in the title indicate.
  • A Rare Connection, an Inspirational Romantic Suspense book.
  • Tucked Away in a Discolored Scrapbook, a collection of creative nonfiction and poetry.
  • Seasons of the Four States, an anthology she edited.

Odds are that I will read either Hard Start or Tucked Away in a Distant Corner first amongst them.

I also asked Mrs. E. if they wrapped books in Mylar as a service, and she said they did for $1.50 a book. So I immediately had them wrap the Edna St. Vincent Millay book and the Ed McBain book to protect the dust jackets. They have rolls of special Mylar with paper designed to brace and protect dust jackets and not clear Mylar, so she made a little sleeve for the Lord Byron book; however, when I got home, I cut the paper from it and had enough to make one of my sloppy wrappers for a book.

So, overall, I spent under a hundred dollars at the book sale both days. Believe it or not, this is actually responsible behavior on my part.

Which is good, as I am again back to stacks of books atop the stacks of books on my to-read shelves. I mean, I once wrote an article talking about hiding the halberd on my office wall on business video calls, but I don’t have to worry about that any more as books are stacked in front of it. And I have not yet built more record shelving to hold recent acquisitions, where recent = in the last two years.

So, I am fortunate that it is about six months until the next book sale. My next trip to ABC Books, not so much.

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Good Album Hunting, April 29, 2022: Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library Book Sale

Brian J. Noggle

As I mentioned, I made it out to the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library’s book sale yesterday and hit the dollar record bins. The selection was smaller than the last sale’s–I guess everyone is realizing the value of old records, or perhaps the old, old records in the genres that I like have worked their way through the resale markets already.

At any rate, I found a few things.

This includes:

  • Al Jolson Volume 3, a 10″ record (Discogs minimum price: $1.55).
  • Mexicali Brass South of the Border. Man, Herb Alpert really spawned a genre, ainna? I am constantly finding new examples of it. ($6.00).
  • When You Come to the End of the Day by Perry Como. I don’t think I have this one, but I have so many now that the odds of me buying a duplicate are getting higher. On the other hand, Perry Como put out a lot of records. I saw his Christmas album with another variant cover. ($0.98).
  • Ready for the World, self-titled debut. Probably more pop than soul/funk. ($1.08).
  • Natalie by Natalie Cole from 1976. ($.40).
  • Warm and Willing by Norrie Paramor and His Orchestra. The first entry today with the Pretty Woman on the Cover (PWOC). ($3.99).
  • Emotion by Samantha Sang. 1978 Funk/soul/pop, or so Discogs says. PWOC. ($.25).
  • Sound Ideas by Les and Larry Elgart. I have a couple by Les and/or Larry, including one I bought last weekend. I would have had another today, but it was only an Elgart cover with another record in it. ($1.00).
  • Night Rider! by Tim Weisberg. Not my favorite flutist, to be honest (top three are my beautiful wife, Herbie Mann, and Amber Underwood). ($.79).
  • This Land Is Your Land by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Philadelphia Orchestra. Pops renditions of American folk songs. What was I thinking? ($.25).
  • Burnished Brass by the George Shearing Quintet with Brass Choir. PWOC. And I like the George Shearing groups, to which I was exposed because the records often have PWOC. ($1.50).
  • Four Rococo Quartets. Classical, but a bit obscure. ($2.50).
  • Highlights from Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah. ($10.32).
  • Holy, Holy, Holy: Hymns We Know And Love. Some hymns, but some pop hymns. This record is not on Discogs, so it must be really collectible.
  • The Music of the Caribbean by the [WIRL] Steel Band. ($1.69).
  • Lightly Latin by Perry Como. Pretty sure I didn’t have it. Everyone released a Spanish-language album in the 1960s, ainna? ($.98)
  • Holidays in Portugal by Lídia Ribeiro. The cover for this record is actually a brochure for a hotel and casinos in Lisbon, with photos and amenities of each. ($5.26)
  • Country Boots by Boots Randolph. Apparently, everyone also put out a country album. So it’s not too different from today. ($1.00)
  • Della on Stage by Della Reese. ($1.25)
  • Tijuana Voices Sing Merry Christmas. I own more mariachi Christmas music than you do. This is not my first. ($1.90)
  • The Holly and the Ivy by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. We already have a MTC Christmas record, and my wife really likes it. So now we have another, which means our record player or receiver is scheduled to flame-out around the holidays again. However, thanks to my mother-in-law’s recent move and downsizing, we have spares.
  • Today by Perry Como. This is a 1987 record, so in my lifetime. ($1.00)
  • The Way of Today by Vikki Carr. Of course, as with the previous listing, Today in the title is now The old days; this record is sixties hits. ($.63).

So that’s 23 records; according to the Discogs marketplace, I paid just about what they’re worth from collectors, although the covers on many of them are in rough shape. But I’m not doing this to make money: I am doing this to see how much weight the floor of my parlor can take before collapse.

So we will see whether I get back up north today or spend my time on something productive.

So far, though, my purchases at the book sale have been fairly responsible. Which is unlike me.

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Good Book Hunting, Friday, April 29, 2022: The Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library and ABC Books

Brian J. Noggle

Today, I took a trip to the north side of Springfield for the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County library book sale, ostensibly to look at the dollar records, but I also picked up a few books and videos from the dollar books section. As I was already up in that area, I also stopped at ABC Books to pick up gift cards for thank-you notes for teachers, but I picked up a couple books there–and told an employee, the son of friends, that he should go door-to-door looking for books for the martial arts section.

Although I hope to return tomorrow to visit the Better Books section and prowl amidst the art monographs and audio courses, I might not make it back–consider this a cliffhanger! And if I do, ABC Books is hosting another book signing with S.V. Farnsworth, so I might swing by there again–as you might remember, gentle reader, I missed Farnsworth when she was at ABC Books last December.

At any rate, today, I got:

  • The 4-Hour Body, an audiobook from Timothy Ferris, author of several books my beautiful wife has liked. I think I have The Tools of Titans in book form around here somewhere.
  • A Night at the Opera, a Marx Brothers movie. As you might recall, gentle reader, I watched Horse Feathers and Duck Soup last November.
  • The Caine Mutiny with Bogart, where he is not the protagonist but is Captain Queeg. I saw this in high school and not since.
  • Swing Shift with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. The film that started it all for them? I haven’t seen it.
  • Twelve O’Clock High, a war picture with Gregory Peck.
  • Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, poems by Raymond Carver. I was just telling someone, probably my wife, that Carver, known more for his short stories, taught my university fiction professor and advisor. Mid-to-late century modern short stories, which explains why she and you have not heard of them.
  • The Loser’s End by William Heyliger, a young adult novel from 1937 about a young man who goes into steel construction and becomes good at it and a successful businessman. Kind of like The Fountainhead without, one would assume, the rough sex.
  • Two volumes from a Mark Twain set that includes The Gilded Age, The American Claimant, and Pudd’nhead Wilson.
  • Pensées, by Blaise Pascal, which I have not read. This one has a Used sticker on it, marking it as a textbook–one wonders if it’s highlighted inside. Yes.
  • Lifetime Collection of Poetry by Lucille Christiansen, a chapbook.
  • Within This Center: Poems and Images by Robert C. Jones, also a chapbook.
  • Thin Ice and Other Poems by Marcia Muth, ibid chapbook.
  • Pioneer Proverbs: Wit and Wisdom from Early America, a saddle-stitched little book.
  • Unspoken: Feelings of a Gentleman, poems by Pierre Alex Jeanty. He has three or four such volumes at ABC Books. Hopefully, they’re good.
  • Road Atlas: Prose & Other Poems by Campbell McGrath.

The Friends book sale did not bundle several chapbooks for a dollar as in years past; I had to pay full price for each. Still, I only spent a combined $35 on all media at the book sale along with $20-something at ABC Books. Almost frugal.

Although tomorrow is half-price day. I might be able to convince my wife to come along to help me carry, and it might be in the Better Book section where I go nuts.

It was strange, too–so many times, I have dragged my boys up there with the promise of a Five Guys burger after, and I have had to hustle before they went into full boredom revolt. Today, though, I did not have them, and I was in and out in under an hour. Part of that, I suspect, is the paucity of records to paw through–less than a third of what it has been some years–and that I really only look at the media and the poetry sections in the dollar book section. Also, I wanted to hurry home as I have other things to do. Like this blog post.

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Something I Noticed

Brian J. Noggle

C’mon, man, I can’t be the only one who noticed this, but Google Meet displays you a mirror image of yourself, as though you were looking in the mirror:

While Zoom and most other video call/recording systems show you a true image, which is what you look like to someone else:

I imagine that Google does that because one tends to think one looks weird or off when viewing one’s self true instead of what one sees in the mirror all the time.

Maybe I’m the only one to notice, since I have had to use so many of the meeting technologies in short order–sometimes two or more per contact (I had a Zoom meeting cut off at the free limit, so we had to switch to Google Meets to finish up recently).

It’s also why you tend to think you look different in photographs. Perhaps Google is trying to help avert video meeting fatigue/stress by making ourselves look more familiar.

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Brian J.’s Recycler Tour, Arkham Edition

Brian J. Noggle

From this date in 2010:

Brian J. Noggle is so vain, he thinks this song is about him and is sending him coded messages from The Messiah Team detailing the secret conspiracy of grocery store bread vendors against him. So maybe “vain” isn’t the operative word.

Facebook, and Twitter, used to be good for a quip, before the algorithms got too sophisticated and stopped showing them to people I know.

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Good Album Hunting, April 24, 2022: Relics Antique Mall

Brian J. Noggle

This afternoon, my youngest son had one of his few remaining middle school youth group activities; his activities are an hour and a half long, and the ride into town is 20 minutes, so instead of coming home and going back to get him, I killed the time at Relics Antique Mall.

As you might recall, gentle reader, I received four $25 gift certificates for Christmas, and they’re not gift cards–they’re old timey gift certificates, but the antique mall does not give change on them, so the best strategy is to spend a little over the face amount and pay the difference. Well, that’s the theory.

So I got some records.

Including:

  • Sundown Lady by Lani Hall, aka Mrs. Herb Alpert, but a noted singer (and author) in her own right. I actually own this album on CD, but now I can spin it in the parlor.
  • The Shape of Things To Come by Larry Elgart. I’ve got some of his other works and they’re okay, so I’ll spend $2 on another.
  • Steve & Eydie Together on Broadway by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. Apparently, I bought a copy in 2015, but if I’m not sure, I’ll spend the $2 to make sure. Besides, this is a radio station copy, so more collectible?
  • Family Portrait, an A&M Records sampler collection.
  • Watch Out! by the Baja Marimba Band. I probably already have this one, too, as I own a lot of this A&M band’s recordings, but it was gift certificate money, man, and I don’t see it in a quick search of previous Good Album Hunting/Good Record Hunting posts. Something interesting about this: It was in a different booth from the tag, and it had two Longine Symphonette records stuck in it. I took them out and left them at the booth where I was shopping, but this will likely cause all sorts of mayhem and perhaps my picture on the Relics Wall of Shame.
  • Artie Shaw and His Gramercy Five
  • Crash and Burn by the Pat Travers Band because someone, I think it was Jack Baruth, posted about him once upon a time recently, although a quick search of his blog does not come up with a post about the band.
  • Hot Pennies by Red Nichols because he’s blowing a trumpet on the cover, and trumpet music is always in fashion at Nogglestead, home of the prettiest trumpet player in the world (leaving Cindy Bradley and Tine Thing Helseth to battle for the #2 spot).
  • Meet the Five Pennies by Red Nichols, because if I like him, I should buy all of them available right now.
  • Swing Along With Jonah Jones by Jonah Jones (a copy of which I bought two years ago at Relics.
  • Swingin’ ‘Round the World by Jonah Jones. When I bought the first album two years ago, I mentioned a second album that I did not buy. There’s no telling if it was this album that I saw. Certainly not this copy.
  • Brazilian Bird by Charlie Bird, another duplicate–I bought a copy in September 2020. This is the first record I picked up, so my trip was snakebitten with duplicates from the start.

So that’s twelve records with 3 or 4 duplicate copies and one an album I already had on another format. So maybe that’s not actually good album hunting.

Jeez, maybe I do really need to organize my record collection so I know what’s in it.

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Another Book Hunter Heard From

Brian J. Noggle

At Ace of Spades HQ, Perfesser Squirrel, who has taken over the Sunday Morning Book Thread after OregonMuse, PBUH, posts some recent book acquisitions:

I had a major book haul this week. The university library in which I work (but I do not work for) had a book sale. Managed to walk away with 20 books for the low, low price of $11. Not too shabby.
Here is my haul:
* The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination edited by John Joseph Adams
* Downtiming the Night Side by Jack L. Chalker
* Lord of the Silent Kingdom by Glen Cook
* Surrender to the Will of the Night by Glen Cook
* Working God’s Mischief by Glen Cook
* Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia
* Monster Hunter Vendetta by Larry Correia
* Monster Hunter Alpha by Larry Correia
* Star Wars: The Joiner King by Troy Denning (side note: I ordered this on Amazon several weeks ago, but it never arrived. According to the tracking number, it got lost in Delaware, so maybe it was left on FJB’s doorstep. But it only cost me $0.50 for the replacement!)
* The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton
* The Temporal Void by Peter F. Hamilton
* The Abyss Beyond Dreams by Peter F. Hamilton
* Gentlemen Takes a Chance by Sara H. Hoyt
* Lost in Translation by Wil McCarthy
* To Crush the Moon by Wil McCarthy
* Wellstone by Wil McCarthy
* Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds
* On the Steele Breeze by Alastair Reynolds
* The Mammoth Book of Steampunk edited by Sean Wallace
* Book of the New Sun Volume 1: Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe

A Jack Chalker book I had not heard of as well as three of Correia’s Monster Hunter series and a Hoyt novel? Not bad indeed.

The Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale is this week, gentle reader. I shall probably go on a weekday to prowl the dollar records and maybe on Saturday for half price day. I don’t tend to roam the fiction sections much, but you never can tell.

Watch this space for Good Book Hunting and Good Album Hunting posts in the coming days.

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Not Depicted: Who You Are

Brian J. Noggle

I guess there’s a comedienne coming to town, but the Facebook ad does not say who it is:

I guessed correctly Margaret Cho even though her name was not listed on the advert, and even though I was not familiar with her work on the listed programs, but I remember she was a big deal from the television program All-American Girl. Twenty-eight years ago. Right about the time I stopped really paying much attention to television or stand-up comedy. So, yeah, I could not really name any comedian under forty.

On the other hand, at least Facebook presented me with an ad for a show in Springfield. Other times, I get ads for artists I’d like to see, like Joss Stone, but she’s performing in Memphis.

Other times, I get bands I’ve never heard of performing nowhere near me.

The who? In Memphis?

And the other who? In LA?

Someday, I would like to have more money than sense. But until then, no jetting off to see unknowns. Given what I’ve heard on the “free” CDs and downloads I’ve seen advertised on Facebook, I’m not even inclined to take those low-cost fliers, either.

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Book Report: The Samurai: The Philosophy of Victory by Robert T. Samuel (2004)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverI bought this book last summer in Berryville, Arkansas. Whilst I am bogged down and bored with the children’s book I’m reading, I have been looking for various other things to read between chapters, and I settled on this volume, especially as I recently succumbed to latent nipponphilia when listening to Understanding Japan: A Cultural History.

However, this is a Barnes and Noble book, so it’s more of a coffee book akin to Samurai Warriors than an actual history. It is lavishly illustrated, which unfortunately often means watermarking images behind the text that make it hard to read in spots, and its text relies heavily on Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai and The Book of Five Rings, texts which Professor Ravina tut-tuts because they’re written a bit anachronistically.

At any rate, it collects some aspirational material about how to live like a samurai, the warrior code and whatnot, interspersed with some stories and legends of samurai. Unfortunately, many of the non-Hagakure and Five Rings sources are unattributed, so one cannot look for those source materials for further reading.

So a bit thick for a simple browse, and not detailed enough for real study. But, I suppose, if you’re looking for a bit of self-help in how to live well, you could do worse.

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Book Report: Tiger Stalk The Executioner #220 (1997)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverI thought this might be the first of the Executioner novels I’ve read this year, but apparently I read Terror Intent to start the year. Which proves, I suppose, either how forgettable the later Executioner novels are or perhaps how long ago January was from now in my mind.

At any rate, this book is a rare artifact in the Executioner series in that the title kinda refers to the plot: Mack Bolan goes to Sri Lanka to find an American diplomat held by the Tamil Tigers. C’mon, man, if you’re of colonoscopy age like me, you cannot read Sri Lanka without a muddy British accent and pronouncing it Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, can you?

Spoiler alert: Mack Bolan does not beat any shopkeepers to death with their own shoes, although this book was written long enough after the film came out that the author could have inserted such a scene. Or perhaps dropped in a Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon for us. But no.

So Mack Bolan meets up with an intelligence counterpart who is playing all three ends against the middle: the government of Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers, and the Americans–I have not done the calculations to determine exactly what number of agent that makes her. She’s ostensibly in the service of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), but she’s sleeping with the head of one of the factions of the Tigers. So when I read Pergelator yesterday, and he mentions RAW in terms of a film he watched, I was all like oh, of course I know what that is. So these books have some small educational value.

Bolan, like my middle school (and high school) Dungeons and Dragons group, does not use the encumbrance rules. Check this out:

A large canvas carryall at his feet contained more gear, including extra clips for the Uzi, as well as for the Beretta and Desert Eagle. Additionally, a 5.56mm M-16 A-2 assault rifle, fitted with an M-203 single-shot grenade launcher, lay beside a small radio transceiver to send messages to the fishing boat waiting in a port in India just across from Palk Strait. An assortment of M-40 and 40mm fragmentation and incendiary grenades, C-4 plastic explosive, miniaturized detonators, trip triggers and timers, and three compact missile-launching LAW 80s completed the portable armory.

He’s carries this bag various places, but it’s well over a hundred pounds of equipment easily, so he should not be carrying it with one hand. I don’t know how big of a carryall that is, but that’s a lot of weight and cubic dimension for a single bag. But I can’t talk. It was not uncommon for my fighters to go into a dungeon with a 10′ pole, 50′ of rope, carrying a pole axe, two handed sword, long bow, and food and water for a week (plus whatever loot we found).

A serviceable book in the series, torn from the headlines of 1997–and the civil war in Sri Lanka, which began in 1983, would last until 2009.

So maybe one can learn things even from these men’s adventure paperbacks from time to time.

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Proving the Rule

Brian J. Noggle

Speaking of artists who try to cross types of art, Severian sez:

Indeed it seems the only “artists” who won’t stay in their lanes are actors. I can’t even count the number of actors who have released shitty albums (and no actors who have released good ones).

C’mon, man, I know William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and most of the other actors who appeared on Golden Throats compilations (full disclosure: I own three of the four) fit this description, some actors/actresses did release records that did not suck.

It might not be high art, but Bruce Willis’s The Return of Bruno was fun:

I like it so much I am disappointed there was never a follow-up.

I am not sure I ever saw an episode of E.R. in its entirety, but Gloria Rueben had a role in it somewhere, at sometime, before she started releasing jazz recordings:

Of which I have two so far, and they’re pretty good.

And, as you might recall, I ordered Pier Angeli’s record, which is not half bad:

She was a movie actress in the fifties and sixties linked romantically to James Dean and Kirk Douglas. She, too, looks to only have released this single album.

And Chris Jericho’s band Fozzy rocks:

Alright, alright, alright, so he’s a professional wrestler, but you know that’s not real, right?

So, most actors recording music (and a lot of contemporary “musicians” recording music which is their voices, corrected, dubbed over computer renderings) are vanity projects of dubious quality. However, using the logical square, or rectangle, or quadratic equation (it’s been decades since I’ve formally studied logic, so I’m a little fuzzy on the particular geometrology of it), to disprove Severian’s All assertion, I need only to prove One is not, which I most certainly have.

But one must have sympathy for Severian, who apparently thinks the Lenny Kravitz version of “American Woman” is superior to the original by The Guess Who. Clearly, this marks him as a closeted fan of 1990s music.

UPDATE:I was talking this over with my beautiful wife this evening, and I said, “You know, there are some actors who fronted bands, like Gary Sinese and Kevin Bacon. And…wait…. Jared Leto’s band, Thirty Seconds to Mars…”

Which doesn’t suck, although I haven’t listened to a lot of them. Here’s a recent track:

Jared Leto strikes me as a moonbat. Which is better for a rock star than an actor anyway.

So maybe this will evolve into a series of posts over time.

By the way, my beautiful wife suggested Jennifer Lopez, but I demurred, saying she was a dancer, so she was in music first. But her timeline on Wikipedia indicates she was an actress first and a singer second. However, gentle reader, I cannot in good conscience put her forward as an example as I am unconvinced as to the merit of her music. Strangely enough, for a guy who owns a bunch of Paulina Rubio and Shakira CDs, not to mention jazz artists like Rocio Durcal, Rocio Jurado, The Triplets, and, yes, even Selina (for whom Jennifer Lopez got noticed when she acted in a movie about the young songbird), I don’t know much of Jennifer Lopez’s music.

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Shopping Like Lileks

Brian J. Noggle

James Lileks recently went into a Macy’s, looking for a belt, and….

I could go to Target, but it’s jammed up and jelly tight on Saturdays. (Note: jelly is not, in fact, tight. Ever.) Macy’s, then. I hadn’t been there since they reconfigured the place. The new look is more “open,” which gives you a full appreciation of the paucity of the merchandise. Perhaps they’re just being more selective. Yes. that’s the idea. Go for that Apple Store look; we know how well it worked out for JCPenney.

I knew where the belts were – Men’s Furnishings, I believe it’s called – so I went there. No belts. A lot of athletic gear. In fact half the men’s department now appears to be sweatpants.

You know, gentle reader, I like to dress like an adult if not entirely the whole Cary Grant. I have often bought George apparel at Walmart, but it doesn’t tend to last very long before the points of the collars show wear from machine washing or the waistline of trousers gets a little banged up. I’ve had pretty good luck with clothing I’ve bought at Target or Kohl’s, but I’ve not tended to go to those department stores frequently. I recently (recently being the last two years) have bought shirts off of Amazon, but they often arrive with loose stitching and popped threads right out of the bag–and even if they don’t, they have the longevity of the George apparel with the price of the upscale department store.

So I went into a Target a couple of weeks ago to pick up some things, and I thought I’d look for shirts whilst I was there. The store is being remodeled (but at least they weren’t jacking up and moving aisles whilst I was shopping). After I dodged closed sections to get to the men’s wear section in the back, I wandered through the diminished stock several times, and the store had no dress clothing whatsoever. No slacks. No button-up (or button-down) shirts. Polo shirts and hoodies and athletic gear, but nothing for an adult to wear.

I have not been in since, and I have not tried Kohl’s to see what its stock is like lately, but I, too, have to wonder if it’s going to be specialty shops and online orders in the future.

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The Perfect Easter Movie

Brian J. Noggle

Ladies and gentlemen, we at MfBJN have conclusively proven that Lethal Weapon is a Christmas movie, and we have admitted that Lethal Weapon 2 is not a Christmas movie. But hear me now and believe me later:

Lethal Weapon 2 is an Easter movie.

Now, it is not set during the Easter season that I can tell; however, review the following:’

  • Martin Riggs is tortured;
  • Riggs carries the means of his execution to the place of execution;
  • Riggs “dies”;
  • He descends to a watery grave;
  • He rises again;
  • In his second coming, he brings justice and retribution to the wicked.

You see: It was The Passion of the Christ before Gibson had enough clout to make the movie he really wanted to make.

Follow me for more insight into how the Lethal Weapon movies all deal with important events on the church calendar, and how Bird on a Wire is a documentary.

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